


The Mabel-over

by burglebezzlement



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Dude where's Grankle Stan's car, Elves, Gen, Girls' Night Out, Mabel Juice, Not even once, Questionable Brunch Etiquette, Temporary Amnesia, The Stanmobile, Treat, gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-17 08:50:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11272089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: When Mabel tries to take Wendy's mind off her worries, they both end up with bigger problems. Like where's the Stanmobile, and why is everything covered in glitter?





	The Mabel-over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



Wendy’s waiting outside Greasy’s Diner when Mabel pulls up in the Stanmobile. 

“Look!” Mabel says, jumping out. “Fully legal. Grunkle Stan didn’t make me dress up like a bear or anything.”

“That’s awesome,” Wendy says. She doesn’t need to ask about the bear costume. Everyone in town is already a little bit too familiar with Stan Pines’ belief that bears don’t need licenses to drive. “So how’s your summer going?”

“It. Has. Been. AMAZING,” Mabel says. She hugs Wendy and then pulls her inside the diner. “Amazing. I beat Pacifica at mini-golf and me and Candy and Grenda met a real werepanther and now Candy’s dating him and then me and Dipper fought an army of intelligent ants. Grunkle Ford made us stop fighting them but then he got covered in ants.” She laughs. “Good times.”

The diner’s crowded, so they grab two stools at the counter. “How about you?” Mabel asks, once they’ve ordered dinner. “I want to know what it’s like in Wendy-land, Wendy-friend.”

“It’s good,” Wendy says.

Mabel’s face drops. “Only good?”

“I mean great!” Wendy shakes her head. “I mean good?”

The truth is, Wendy’s not sure how she’s doing. She just got back to Gravity Falls after finishing her junior year of college. Which apparently means every vaguely adult-shaped person she’s met has asked her what she’s doing after college. Every single one. _Even Stan._ And Wendy has no idea what to tell them, because she’s come to the horrible realization that she doesn’t know.

Mabel studies Wendy for a long moment. “Really good?”

“Good enough,” Wendy says.

“We can fix that,” Mabel says. “Nobody’s just good enough with Mabel. We’re going to go out on the town tonight.” 

She slides a sheet of paper across the counter to Lazy Susan. “My special recipe,” she says. “Keep ‘em coming.”

“You’re underage,” Wendy says.

Mabel grins. “Who needs alcohol when you have Mabel Juice?”

When the drinks come, there’s a layer of haze hanging over the surface of the liquid. Mabel pulls two plastic dinosaurs out of her pocket to drop into each glass. “Bottoms up,” she says. “And then you’re going to tell Mabel all your problems.”

Why not, Wendy thinks. They’re in Gravity Falls. How crazy can their night get?

* * *

When Wendy wakes up, she’s on a surface composed of bumpy, soft things that are moving gently underneath her. It’s soothing for the first thirty seconds or so, when she can pretend she’s getting a full-body massage. And then she opens her eyes.

She’s sleeping on something shaped like a canopy bed that’s made up of — severed _hands_?

“Oh no, oh no, oh no.” Wendy jumps off the hand-bed and tries to brush the feeling of their fingers off of herself. She can’t. She may never be able to forget it.

While she watches, the hands making up the bed collapse and scurry off. 

Wendy tries to brush herself off again, and then gives up. She’s in some sort of cave, and there’s snoring coming from behind a big rock. When she follows the snores, she finds Mabel, fast asleep in a hammock made of more severed hands.

“Mabel?” Wendy pokes her, keeping herself clear of the hands. “Mabel, we have to get out of here.”

“Put the badger in with the unicorns,” Mabel mutters, and then she turns over. One eye opens, red and bleary. “Wendy?”

“Mabel, do you know why we’re in a cave filled with severed hands?”

Mabel looks down at the hammock and then back up at Wendy. “Wow,” she says. “I do not remember anything about last night.”

“Me neither,” Wendy says. “Why are there hands everywhere?”

“I guess we came to visit the Hand Witch,” Mabel says. “Huh. We should go say hi.”

She stretches and yawns, and then jumps out of the hand hammock. The hands break apart and run on nimble fingers ahead of them.

Wendy hears the Hand Witch before she sees her.

“You two are TERRIBLE GUESTS,” the Hand Witch screeches. “I invited you for BRUNCH and GIRL TALK and then you both just SLEPT THROUGH IT.”

When Wendy rounds the corner of the rough cavern, she sees the Hand Witch seated on a throne of hands. On front of her, a table made of hands is covered with dishes which are also made of hands. There’s a hand bowl filled with eggs and a hand platter of bacon, and even hands in the shape of goblets.

“Are those mimosas?” Wendy asks. Her throat’s so dry that drinking flat champagne and orange juice from a severed hand goblet seems like a good idea. 

“Mimosas are for people who don’t SLEEP THROUGH BRUNCH,” the Hand Witch says. “HANDS! Take them away!”

Wendy braces herself for the tide of hands that sweeps through the cavern and carries them out to the edge of the cliff. For a terrifying moment, she thinks the hands are going to tip them off into space, but then they’re deposited at the cliff’s edge.

Mabel gets up and shakes herself off. “Guess we get to walk back,” she says. “At least it’s a nice day for a hike!”

It’s still early morning, by the angle of the sun on the horizon, but it’s shaping up to be a scorcher of the day, and Wendy’s already sweaty and gross, like she’s run a marathon she doesn’t remember. The light is so bright, it feels like it’s breaking Wendy’s skull open. 

When she looks down at herself, her clothes are more wrinkled than usual. Her cell phone’s missing. She’s also covered in glitter, although that’s not a mystery. Mabel Pines is Patient Zero of any glitter outbreak.

“So you really don’t remember anything?” Wendy asks.

“Big old nope here.” Mabel jumps up on a rock and starts looking around them. “Hey, do you remember a weird old-timey ray gun thing?”

“I don’t remember anything,” Wendy says.

“Huh.” Mabel points off into the mountains. “I think we go that way.”

“Maybe if we want to get lost and eaten by bears,” Wendy says. She squints at the horizon. Based on her orienteering class, and the position of the mountains — “We go that way to town.” 

“Awesome.” Mabel jumps down from the boulder and starts walking.

After a heart-stopping climb down from the Hand Witch’s cave, they work their way below the tree line and find a path leading back into town. The shade of the woods is cool after the sunshine on the cliff, and Wendy takes a deep breath, relaxing at the familiar smells of the forest.

“Better?” Mabel asks. 

“I’ll really be better once we get some water,” Wendy says. There’s springs and stuff in the forest, but everyone in Gravity Falls knows not to drink from those unless you want to risk ending up immortal, cursed, or infected with beaver fever.

They’re already in the outskirts of town when Mabel’s cell gets reception again. Wendy’s too tired to think about calling someone. Instead, they stumble into Yumberjack’s. Wendy’s wallet is chained to her jeans, and while most of the cash she had the night before is gone, she still has a few crumpled bills and her Yumberjack’s Frequent Yummer Card. 

Wendy drinks down an entire Pitt Cola at the soda fountain before refilling her cup again with ice and going to join Mabel. They sort out their breakfasts — three Kiddie Jack Pancake Breakfasts for Mabel, and a sausage and egg sandwich for Wendy. She’s not sure if she’s going to be able to keep it down, but after the first bite, her stomach settles into a low-level queasiness.

Mabel pulls a plastic dinosaur out of her pocket and drops it into her soda. “You want one?” she asks, when she sees Wendy watching. “Little hair of the dog.”

“I’m good,” Wendy says. She puts her sandwich down. “What happened last night?”

“I have no idea,” Mabel says, between bites of her Yumbercakes with Real Non-Maple Syrup. “I think we lost Grunkle Stan’s car, too.”

Wendy slides down in the booth. “We’re so screwed,” she says.

“Cheer up!” Mabel hands one of her Kiddie Jack toys to Wendy. It’s a little plastic duck wearing a detective’s hat. “Duck-Tective came back for a movie franchise.”

Wendy stares down at the plastic duck. “You think he can help us find Stan’s car?”

“Absolutely not,” Mabel says. “But maybe we can use a tip or two from my years as a loyal Duck-tective fan to quack the case.”

“Did you just say —”

Mabel jumps up, the rest of her Yumbercakes apparently forgotten. “To the local constabulary!”

* * *

After the burning summer sun beating down on the sidewalk, the inside of the sheriff’s office is dark and cool.

Blubs and Durland are in. There’s a piñata hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. Durland is blindfolded, holding a club, and wandering around at the far end of the room, poking his club out in front of himself.

The door jangles when it shuts behind Wendy and Mabel, and there’s a thump when Durland hits the wall. “Did I get it?” he yells.

“We’ve got citizens here,” Blubs yells back, and Durland pushes up his blindfold.

Mabel and Wendy step up to the counter. “We’d like to report Grand Theft Stanmobile,” Mabel says. 

“Oh ho ho!” Blubs smiles. “If it isn’t our own Princess Twinkletoes.”

“Uh… thanks?” Mabel says.

“Oh, I didn’t mean you.” Blubs turns to face Wendy. “We have you to thank for saving the town, little lady!”

Wendy stares at him. “What?”

“From the elves,” Durland says. He drops his club and comes up to the main desk. “You were all like whoosh! Whoosh!” He makes strange, swooshing motions with his hands, and Wendy steps back to avoid getting hit.

“What my esteemed colleague and life-long love is trying to say is that you danced with the elves.” Blubs makes a harumphing sound. “Deputy, pull up the tape.”

It takes a few minutes for Blubs and Durland to find the station’s television, figure out how to plug it in, and find the tape, and then a few more minutes for them to connect the player to the screen, but eventually they pull up a security recording.

On the screen, half the citizens of Gravity Falls move in grainy, black-and-white patterns. “It was square dance night down at the Legion Hall,” Durland says. He points to the screen. “See? There we are! On the T. V.!”

“There we are indeed,” Blubs says. He watches for a moment, and then hits the fast-forward button.

There’s a flurry of static on the screen, and Blubs takes the video off fast-forward. When the picture stabilizes, Wendy can see a group of tall, impossibly glamorous men and women standing in the center of the room. Even on the grainy recording, they’re beautiful.

“Hubba hubba,” Mabel says. “Who are those guys?”

While they watch, the central figure begins pacing back and forth. He seems to be talking. 

“That-there elf was telling us they were tired of not bein’ invited to town events,” Blubs says. “Said he was going to take himself a new spouse unless a champion could best him in the art of the tango.”

“Ooooooh.” Mabel’s nose is almost touching the screen. “What happens next?”

“When all seemed lost, a challenger appeared!” Deputy Durland points to the screen. 

Wendy swallows. It’s her, wearing a long skirt under her flannel shirt. While she watches, the tiny screen Wendy steps forward and begins to dance with the head elf. Even on the recording, Wendy can see that her head is held haughtily back while she stalks across the dance floor. 

“I have no memory of this,” Wendy says. She knows these steps — she aced Tango 101 and Tango 102 her sophomore year, but she hasn’t used the knowledge since then.

Except for last night, apparently. 

On the screen, Wendy dips the elf and then twirls him around before running her hand up his flank. The elf shivers, and then snaps his fingers and hands Wendy something. It looks like a rolled-up piece of paper.

“Wendy, you’re amazing,” Mabel breathes. “Who did she save?”

Wendy swallows again. “What did he give me?”

Blubs points to the corner of the screen, where one of the elves steps forward and releases —

“Dipper?” Mabel’s eyes are wide. “Wendy, you saved my brother!”

Wendy tries to brace herself, but there’s no way to prepare for the way Mabel’s arms go around her stomach like a vise. “It’s cool!” she says, her voice strangled. “It’s cool, Mabel.”

On the screen, there’s another flare of static, and then the elves are gone.

“They disappeared all sparkly-like,” Durland says. 

Mabel grins. “I knew that wasn’t my glitter.”

* * *

After another viewing of the tape, Blubs agrees to take a report on the lost Stanmobile, and they give Mabel and Wendy a ride back to the Mystery Shack.

Inside, Dipper’s sprawled out on the couch in shorts and a dirty T-shirt. “Mabel? Did you bring back the —” His voice goes up when he sees Wendy. “Wendy! Ah. Um. Hi?”

“Hey,” Wendy says. She leans up against the wall. “I hear I saved your life.”

“Uh —” Dipper pulls at his t-shirt collar. “Yeah. I can’t thank you enough, Wendy. I mean I would have been able to fight the elves, of course, if it had come to that, but —”

“No, you wouldn’t have.” 

Stanford Pines sweeps into the room, his coat billowing dramatically behind him in spite of the 90 degree heat. “Elves are fatal in nearly 99% of incursions, Dipper. If this young lady hadn’t been there with her outstanding tango skills, you would have been the Elf King’s new bride.”

Dipper swallows.

“What I don’t get is what happened next,” Mabel says. She flops down on the floor in front of the couch. Waddles wanders over, and Mabel picks up a box of pig treats from the dinosaur skull and starts feeding him. “Where did we go? How did we end up with the Hand Witch?”

Dipper leans back against the couch. “All I know is, you got picked up by some giant bird thing,” he says. “Then you flew off, and I got stuck driving the Stanmobile home.”

“Giant bird thing?” Mabel looks down at Waddles. “You got any clues?”

Wendy slips off to the gift shop and hits the vending machine to get a Pitt cola. Giant bird-thing — it sounds vaguely familiar. But if Dipper drove the Stanmobile home, where’s the car?

When she gets back to the living room, Dipper and Mabel and Ford are all clustered around some old book.

“That’s the Lesser Arcturan Mega-Tern,” Ford says. “When it flies, it blackens out the very stars in the sky!”

“Whooooooah.” Dipper stares down at the page.

Mabel’s fidgeting. “That’s great, Grunkle Ford, but what about some birds from this reality?”

“Right.” Ford flips through the pages. “Did it look like this?”

“The Golden Thunder-Eagle,” Mabel reads from the page. “Hmmm. Wendy?”

Wendy’s about to protest that she doesn’t remember anything, but when she leans forward, she has a vague sense of familiarity. There’s a momentary flash of the two of them, very drunk on Mabel Juice and the success of saving Dipper from the elves, clinging to the neck of a giant, golden bird as it approached the Hand Witch’s mountain peak.

“Maybe,” Wendy says. “I think I remember something, but it’s like my head’s all jumbled up.”

Dipper gives her a sympathetic look. “You’re doing pretty well,” he says. “My first Mabel Juice hangover, I ended up barfing on the Piedmont football team.” He shivers. “The entire football team.”

“Oh, whatever,” Mabel says. “We got to go on an adventure!”

Dipper jumps up. “Hey! I forgot, what with all the elf stuff. Some tourist turned your phone in to the Lost and Found this morning, Wendy.” 

He runs out of the room and comes back a minute later with Wendy’s cell.

“Thanks, Dipper,” Wendy says. 

The carved redwood phone case Wendy’s dad whittled her last year is a bit battered, but the screen isn’t cracked. She checks her messages, sends her dad a text not to worry, and starts flipping through earlier texts. Nothing about last night. 

But when she opens her photos, there’s a bunch of pictures she doesn’t remember taking.

“Hey, Mabel?” Wendy holds up the phone to a selfie of the two of them, wading in the fountain downtown. “Do you remember this?”

“Ha!” Mabel grabs the phone and starts swiping. “Wendy, you’re a genius! There’s us at Lazy Susan’s, and me wearing laser tag gear.”

It’s their entire night. There’s even a couple pictures of Wendy dancing with the elf, and a photo of Mabel waving in front of the camera while Wendy dips the elf deeply in the background.

After the elf pictures, there’s a couple more photos that Wendy can’t decipher — a party? A parade? And then there’s Mabel chatting with the Hand Witch, a picture of a giant golden eagle landing on Main Street, and then a couple pictures of the Mystery Shack from an eagle’s eye view.

The last photo shows the parking lot of the Mystery Shack. “I must have dropped the phone when we flew over,” Wendy says. 

“The Stanmobile’s there,” Mabel says. 

It is — red, scarred, ancient, and parked with an attention to detail that means Dipper parked it last. Mabel and Stan’s parking jobs always sprawl across two spaces, which is an achievement in a parking lot in an unmarked field. 

“Is that Stan getting into the car?” Wendy asks. She zooms in and there he is, opening the door and looking behind himself. He’s holding a rolled parchment that looks suspiciously like the one the head elf gave to Wendy after their dance together. 

Mabel gasps. “He must have decided to follow the elves’ treasure map!”

“So where is he now?” Dipper asks. “I haven’t seen him all morning.”

While they stare at one another, Wendy realizes that she’s hearing a sound from the Mystery Shack’s parking area. It’s a deep, asthmatic wheeze layered under the sound of squealing belts, like someone’s driving a car that’s been through Weirdmaggeddon and back with only minor maintenance. 

“The Stanmobile!” Mabel jumps up from the floor and runs out to the parking area. 

Stan pulls the Stanmobile across two parking spaces and half-steps, half-falls out of the door. 

He’s covered with twigs and brush, and there’s a huge bruise forming on his leg, which they can see because something seems to have chewed away part of his pants. He also has several porcupine quills sticking out of his nose, which is swollen to twice its normal size.

He turns to see them looking at him. “What?”

Mabel rushes over. “Grunkle Stan, what happened?”

“Elves are dicks,” Stan growls. He glares at everyone, and then stomps off to the Shack.

“Oh dear.” Ford looks after him. “Dipper, get whatever this realm uses for antibiotic cream. I’ll get the pliers.”

“Pliers?” Wendy asks.

“I’ve found it’s best not to think about these things,” Mabel says cheerfully. “The Stanmobile’s back! You wanna go hang out on the roof?”

* * *

The weather’s hot and hazy, but the roof’s shaded by the surrounding trees, and Wendy’s cooler holds several lukewarm cans of Pitt Cola.

She cracks one open and tosses another to Mabel, who catches it and uses it to hold down a corner of the elves’ map, which was crumpled up on the front seat of the Stanmobile.

“I think I see where Grunkle Stan went wrong,” Mabel says. She traces a path on the parchment with her finger. “See? He needed to go around Porcupine Hollow.”

Wendy looks over. “Maybe.”

“Or maybe we could get that giant eagle back again, and ask him to fly us there.” Mabel’s got a speculative look in her eye. “We could mount the greatest treasure-hunting expedition ever seen in Gravity Falls!”

“Pass.” Wendy shudders. “Stan’s right. Elves are dicks. We’d probably get there and it’d be, like, fairy treasure that vanishes in the morning or something.”

“Yeah,” Mabel says. But when she rolls up the parchment, she slips it into her back pocket.

Wendy picks up a pinecone and throws it at the tree. It hits the knot she was aiming for. “Hole in one,” she says.

“So how are you doing with the whole job thing?” Mabel asks. 

“I told you about that?”

“Yeah,” Mabel says. “Before the Mabel Juice really kicked in.”

“Right.” Wendy leans back against the sun-warmed shingles of the roof. “I dunno, man. I kept taking classes that interested me. But now it’s like, what am I supposed to do with a background in orienteering, ancient Sumerian, and the evolution of water-based mammals?”

“Only about a bajillion things,” Mabel says. “You could be Gravity Falls’ town weirdness officer! People could call you when weird stuff happens. Or you could lead people in the forest. Or do ballroom dance at a fancy resort in the mountains!”

“I don’t think people do that last one anymore,” Wendy says, amused. Last week Gravity Falls Public Access TV showed Unclean Hoedown, a movie about a teen girl learning to dance at a summer resort in the 1960s. Mabel must have watched it.

Mabel gasps. “You could open your own resort,” she whispers. “It would be amazing. You could hire me and Candy and Grenda as your instructors!” Her eyes go wide and starry, like she’s imagining herself in the film’s pivotal cantaloupe scene. 

“I think you have to be nice to people in the hotel business,” Wendy says. “If you want them to come back, anyway.”

Mabel grins. “That’s what you’d hire me for.”

“So those are my career options?” Wendy asks. “Running a dance resort, working for the Sheriff’s office, or leading trips into the forest?”

“Only out of, like, a bajillion more,” Mabel says. “You could do basically anything.”

“Thanks, Mabel,” Wendy says. She’s not sure what the other bajillion career options are, but Weirdness Officer sounds like something that just might work. And if not, well, Mabel’s right. There’s a ton of different things she can try. 

“Any time,” Mabel says. “Let’s go throw pinecones at the gnomes. Grunkle Stan says they’re getting into the gift shop again.” Her eyes light up. “Hey! Supernatural pest control! Another Gravity Falls career-pertunity!”

Wendy laughs. With Mabel finding careers for her to try, her only problem is going to be how many different opportunities she has.


End file.
